Warning: Government-Run Healthcare Is Very Hazardous to Your Health

Back in 2010, I guest-hosted Larry Kudlow’s CNBC program for a couple of days. During one of the segments on my last show, I crossed swords with the other host, Simon Hobbs, as we argued whether patients needlessly died because of the government-run healthcare system in the United Kingdom.

Since neither one of us had data at our fingertips, it was basically a he-said/he-said exchange.

Today, I’m going to administer the coup de grâce. I don’t think anybody will be able to pretend that bureaucrats and politicians do a good job after watching this powerful news report from the United Kingdom

There is a lot of powerful data in that report, but the number that jumps out at me is that death rates are 45 percent higher in the United Kingdom than they are in the United States.

That’s not statistical noise. That’s a huge gulf and it shows a massive failure on the part of government on the other side of the Atlantic.

By the way, none of this is to suggest that the American system is perfect. We have huge problems caused by direct government intervention (programs such as Medicare and Medicaid) and indirect government intervention (with the tax-code’s healthcare exclusion being at the top of my list).

So while England’s big-government approach puts people on waiting lines and causes needless deaths, America’s big-government approach causes third-party payer which cripples the free market and leads to high prices and inefficiency.

But if I have to choose between the United States and the United Kingdom, it’s not even close. The American system is not as screwed up as the British system, though I realize that’s damning with faint praise.

Let’s close by reminding ourselves that Paul Krugman infamously wrote that, “In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.” The news report you just watched suggests that he’s putting ideology above evidence. And if you want more data (some of it very distressing and tragic), you can click here.

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I lived under the British healthcare system for a number of years and will attest to the truth in the report. Doctors who remained in the system were horribly overworked. Medical staff struggled between idealism and exhaustion. http://coldwarwarrior.com/

I have several friends spread across Europe in countries with socialized medicine. One friend in Norway spent 2 years in crippling pain and unable to work on a waiting list for back surgery. When he finally got to the top of the list he was turned away again because his back “was not bad enough to warrant surgery yet.” I’ll take American health care any day.

I like to compare the difference between government-run programs and private programs with the example of my garbage collectors- to whit:

I moved from Houston to Austin, owning two houses for awhile. In Houston I had private garbage collection. In Houston- I put ANYTHING out to the curb and they took it away. In Houston, if they did not collect my garbage, I had the option of hiring a different private service. In Austin, I was introduced to government-run (and mandated) garbage collection with RULES for what they will collect. In Austin, I have to figure out what they will take, and find clever and sometimes costly ways of disposing of the rest myself. While moving between the houses, I took the garbage back to my house in Houston for disposal. When I sold the Houston house, that option disappeared.

And here is the ultimate: I witnessed a city garbage collector who started to heft my garbage can. then put it back at the curb and went back to his cab and found a pad of stickers. He sat for about a minute while he filled out the sticker and placed it on my can. I went out to look at the sticker. It read “can is out of compliance” and had a box checked indicating the can weighed over 50 pounds, which meant the did not have to lift it. So, he put more effort into filling a tag than it would have taken to lift the can. Just out of curiosity, I weighed the can- it was 62 pounds. He must have calibrated hands…

Imagine the potential results if our health care is treated in the same manner… and it will be if this is allowed to continue.

These and similar concerns about the ultimate quality of mandatory communal healthcare are valid. Even progressives recognize some of those shortcomings. But in the mind of voter-lemmings all these concerns are dwarfed by the incredible redistribution vehicle government healthcare becomes. If we exclude the moral aspect of redistribution, voter lemmings are actually correct in their SHORT-TERM assessment: Government Healthcare amounts to a huge redistribution bonanza that inevitably makes rare exceptionalism less attractive and mediocrity a more comfortable. That is, it flattens the effort-reward curve, the overwhelming driver of motivation in almost all humans (I am excluding Mother Teresa and the Occupy protesters who will work enthusiastically and exceptionally day-in day-out to serve the greater good once humanity is coerced into a more compassionate moral framework). But in the mid-long term (the only important factor in long term prosperity and national trajectory) they are digging the grave of American privileged prosperity — which prosperity currently elevates even the average occupy protester into the top 15% of worldwide standard of living.

Voter-lemmings are grossly ignorant about the highly non-linear relationship between competitiveness and prosperity. If you are the most prosperous country in the world, a 10% decrease in competitiveness (ie. a 10% flattening of the effort reward curve) does not simply trigger a 10% decrease in relative prosperity. To the extent that this 10% deterioration erases the competitive advantage that you hold over other nations, you don’t just go down 10%. You get obliterated. Any person who has dealt with international business and has faced a unilateral 10% increase in costs or 10% decrease in quality is keenly aware of that. He/She is keenly aware that a mere 10% decrease in competitiveness can push you past the tipping point under your competitors. Apparently voter-lemmings prefer to hope that nothing terrible will happen – “we still have margin for another little social program <> “ — especially American voter-lemmings with their notorious international naiveté.

Flatter effort-reward curves will erase the motivational advantage that Americans enjoyed for most of their selfish capitalist history. Effort-reward curves in America have already crossed the tipping point taking Americans down an irreversible decline path of lower growth. A path that will lead to absorption of the once enviable American standard of living into the worldwide average. The decline is relative, not absolute. But a world where two or three billion people have grown to catch up with your once privileged top 10% worldwide standard of living, will feel different – very different.

The point of no return has passed for America. Americans are now doomed to follow Europe into the decline delusion of HopNChange. The delusion that someone else, someone smarter, someone more competent or someone simply harder working will leave his home and family every morning to go outcompete the world so that you can maintain your American Middle Class top 15% standard of living. Many moth electorates have perished on that delusional siren song. But the moth is ever fatally attracted to the light. Few electorates will escape this vicious cycle of delusion. Understand this reality, stay mobile, teach your children to be mobile, and you will fare better than most voter-lemmings. You may even be able to steal their wallets in your last few acts before you leave their Titanic. They think you are an easy prey greedy rich who can be stuffed in the bag by pitchforks anyway. They think that you were being paid too much compared to other competent people worldwide making things that they wanted. So steal their wallets and build them some windmills as their Titanic goes down.

a nation of part-time burger flippers………………… living in a surveillance state… with bad health care… a gutted economy and the same prospects of a bright future as France… bye-bye Miss American pie… drove my Chevy to the levy…………………. but the levy was dry….

[…] This system, by the way, generally has been good for the country. It probably helps to explain why the United States has not traveled as rapidly in the wrong direction as other industrialized nations. Simply stated, the left didn’t have easy opportunities to impose bad policies such as a VAT or single-payer government-run healthcare. […]

[…] P.S. Here’s my collection of horror stories about the U.K.’s version of Obamacare: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,here, here, here, here, here, here and here. By the way, Paul Krugman tells us that all these stories are false. So who are you going to believe, him or your lying eyes? […]